


Oh, Breathe, Just Breathe

by charjace



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 02:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15109967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charjace/pseuds/charjace
Summary: oh breathe, just breathe, oh breathe, just breathe





	Oh, Breathe, Just Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Songs Used; Breathe - Anna Nalick, How to Save A Life - The Fray, Sober - P!nk

 

They’ve all got their stories, everyone does. Everyone has a story and some are willing to share them and others, not so much. Now, these three they all share a common thread within their own stories, and it’s not just because they know each other. It was open mic night at their local bar and they think they’re all okay with sharing their stories through the music. It may just be covers for now, and maybe one day down the road they’ll write one of their own. She’s on the drums as the words flow out, and her arms move the sticks to the beat.

> **_No one can find the rewind button, girl._  **

_She made the mistake of loving him, no, she never really did love him, just what he could provide for her and that was this_ fix _and years after, she knew it wasn’t love. But, at the time, it was what she thought it was. He didn’t want her for her body like the other boys had, he liked her for her and he could give her that fix. It was how they started out, finding each other for the high, because doing it together was better then doing it alone. Though, after a night out of partying and living she came home to him laying on the couch. Something just wasn’t right about it._

_Scrambling over to him, she tries and feels for a pulse and feels nothing. Eyes wide, she shakes him and still, there is nothing. So, with tears in her eyes, she calls 911 and waits. She waits until the ambulance comes and they ask her if she wants someone. She can’t face her brother, not right now, nor her mother, so she calls a friend of hers, and the blonde picks her up._

_Hours later, she is shaking and throwing up into the toilet as Lydia held her hair back. She remembers the saddened look on the woman’s face when she picked her up, the tight hug she was pulled into. In that hug, she remembered all the times when she was a fourteen and Lydia was sixteen and best friends with her brother, the crush she had on her before her younger brother died in a car accident. The accident happened when she was seventeen, leaving her less a brother and with an injured mother who was then served with divorce papers a week later. Her big brother and her had to be the strong ones, but it had gotten hard and there was this one kid in school who offered something to make her numb._

_She wanted into med school, she should have known better but, she was young and naive and just wanted to make all the pain go away. Told herself, it was just a one time thing yet, it was from there on that she fell down the rabbit hole. The rabbit whole where she found the man she thought would love forever and him her, flaws and all._

_Yet, now here she is shaking, sweating and feeling hot and cold all at the same time._

_“Do you want me to call Alec or Maryse?” Lydia asks, her voice soft as she tied the long black hair into ponytail before going over to the sink and wetting a cloth so that she can sooth the fire hot forehead of the younger.  
_

_She shakes her head a tiny bit, and even that hurt her head, “N-No. I just need to get clean,” the admission quiet upon her lips, but it’s the truth. She needed to get clean before she can face her family._

_Lydia sighs, and informs her of a few rehab centre’s that she’s looked at, and it hurts a little to find that Lydia has looked at these for years. Keeping them on tab for when she admitted that she needed, and wanted to get clean. In fact, her family was already on the verge of calling an intervention._

_That night, she cried for the first time in three years, since the accident. She’s broken inside, and has been for years filling the cracks with the high of the drugs. She put up such a facade and now, here she is broken and crying into the arms of her brother’s best friend._

_Lydia helps her to a centre where she get’s clean, where she apologises profusely to her family and they tell her that it’s okay. That they just care that she is doing better, and is getting clean. That they still love her no matter what._

Isabelle’s eyes look over at Lydia who is sitting in the corner of the bar, sitting with the rest of their friends and family. The ring on Lydia’s finger glistening in the light as she waves at Isabelle. The dreams of marrying Lydia when she was fourteen came true six months ago, where she wore a dress that her best friend Clary had designed for her. Clary’s brother was up on the stage, fingers playing against the keys of the keyboard. Letting all his emotions show for the world to see.

> **_And I pray to God that he hears you._  **

_He never touched the stuff when he was a teenager, it never got his interest. He didn’t see why other teenagers liked it. Maybe it was because they weren’t allowed it as to why they wanted it. He wouldn’t know, because when he did pick up the stuff it was to drown the sorrows._

_Sure, he had known that he was adopted, he didn’t look anything like his family, also he was raised by his father for the first ten years of his life. Yet, just six months ago, he found out that his father wasn’t his father. That, he was kidnapped as an_ infant _to just be abused and raised to be the ‘perfect’ child. He still has all the scars, and remembers them all._

_How he got them all, and god the stuff burns his throat as it goes down. He hates it but, it makes him forget about it all. Forget about the bruises and the yelling, forget about how learnt piano and how he had to wait a week again before playing._

_To him, he used the stuff to numb the hollowness he gained inside after losing everything he thought he once had. After finding out that his father was much worse then he knew. It had taken him years to open up to his new family, to his new friends. So long for them to see the broken boy he was truly inside, but with a few words it went away. His guard went back up and he tried to drown the broken boy with the liquor that he doesn’t even like. No one noticed, at least not for a month but then maybe he started getting sloppy._

_His breath always reeking of the stuff, words almost in a constant slurred state. His usual high posture slumped and tripping on his feet here and there. Something they would have never have associated with him, nor would he with himself._

_They all tried to talk to him about it, but he brushed them off. Tell them that it was nothing and is just.... sick, hungover from the night before... any excuse to get away from the questions. Ones that he’s afraid to answer._

_“Can you please just sit?” Alec asks, and there is a hidden worry behind those hazel eyes of his best friend. “I just want to talk.”  
_

_He musters up a smile as polite that he could, and Alec’s eyes are soft as they look at him. Taking him in and he just wants to curl up and hide away. It’s quiet for a while, but then Alec is telling him how he’s noticed, how everyone has noticed how his behaviour has changed over the past six months. That they’re worried for him, of what could happen tomorrow if it goes to far, or next week or... he got the deal._

_“Stop it! Just stop! Don’t worry about me!” He yells out, tears brimming his eyes and he looks away, no longer able to look at the male sitting across from him. “You can’t understand! I was_ never _anyone! My father.... oh no, just some fucker who kidnapped him and murdered my parents! Put into the system when he realises I’m not his perfect little boy!”_

_“You’re right, I can’t understand that,” Alec replies, his voice calm and not daring to match the raised voice of his own. “But, I do know loss and feeling lost. I just want to help you, before...”  
_

_“Before I end up like Izzy... Alec.... I’m just... so broken. I don’t feel like I am who I was anymore. I... how can I be? God!” Sucking in a deep breath, he runs his hands through his hair, hand down his face and his cheeks are wet. “It just makes me feel... numb inside and helps me forget all the bad stuff Alec. I can remember why I have each and **every**  scar I have, and now, those memories are more tainted. I...”  
_

_“It’s okay,” Alec says, going over to wrap him in a hug where he breaks down crying, holding onto his friend for dear life.  
_

Fingers were playing against the keys, finding their home with the black and white keys. When he was younger, these keys, he thought they’d be his home but his father made them a prison for sixteen years of his life. But, here with this little band of his, the instrument is now a home for him and his fingers. The next song starts and his fingers are ghosting over the keys as he flashes a smile over to Alec sitting with their friends before he’s aiming it at their guitarist and main singer.

> **_The quiet scares me cause it screams the truth_ **

_There are people who warn you that watching your parent drink their problems away teaches you to do the same. They tell you that it’s the just being around it that makes you vulnerable to it. What they don’t tell you, or, what they actually are meaning to tell you is that it is hereditary. That, if you’re not careful, it might be passed on to you. Now, he started drinking when he was a teenager. Going to parties and drinking, raiding his mother’s stash and downing it with his friends. Harmless right? You would think so._

_His mother stopped having alcohol in the house when he was sixteen years old, but there were other ways around it. Parties, he went to them and knew someone who made him a great fake I.D._

_No one tells you that, sometimes you can function like an average person and still be classed as an alcoholic. No one told him that this was how his mother got away with it for years on end. No one warned him that this would be him by the age of twenty three._

_He’s in his last year of college, sharing an apartment with his boyfriend just close by the campus. There is never alcohol in the apartment though, no, not when your boyfriend is a recovering alcoholic - going on two years. He’s proud of his boyfriend for this, and which is why he just drinks out in the bars alone, or with just a few of his friends._

_In fact, he was just at a party and everyone went home, but him? No, he went to a bar that was open and drinking until that closed. He didn’t want to go home, still want to drink but there was nothing open anymore. So with a heavy sigh, he is calling up someone who maybe up at this hour._

_“What’s up?” Her voice asks on the other end of the line, a bit of concern lacing her voice but on alert._

_“I’m outside... you know... the one I always am at,” He slurs out, his mind going blank as he can’t remember the name of the place. He should know it, he frequents it all the time, why was he blanking on it now.  
_

_“I know,” There is a sigh, and she sounds exhausted, nothing like she did when she picked up.  
_

_“Awesome,” He’s sporting a huge, loopy grin upon his lips. The line goes dead, and then he is bored as he waits for her to come and pick him up.  
_

_She pulls up in front of him, her features tired as she wraps an arm around him and pulls him up from the sitting position he had found himself in. Clary is putting him into her passengers side, he watches as the lights go by and she is pulling up in his apartment complex. They always went to hers when she picked him._

_Clary tells him that she is done covering for him, that she should have never started to do so in the first place. That, she thinks that he too, like her brother and his boyfriend is an alcoholic._

Simon just sings into the microphone, letting all his past fears going away with the music. It’s relaxing and he loves it. Watching as people danced along to the music that he played with people he cared about. The set ends, and they climb off of the stage, and going over to their friends and families.

Simon wraps an arm around Jace’s waist, pressing a soft kiss to his head as they all took a seat. Isabelle sitting next to Lydia, giving her a kiss as they sat next to each other.

Clary beaming at them all, Alec and Magnus holding hands and smiling too. Rebecca was here too, so was Maia and Luke and Maryse. Elaine, she couldn’t make it, but Rebecca told them that she recorded it all for them to watch later.

And, they’re there for a while just talking away until they start to slink away. Lydia, Jace, Simon and Izzy the last ones. Heading out, they stop just outside the place, Lydia smiling up at the boys. “You guys did wonderful. Baring your past like that,” She says, and leans in to press a soft kiss to her wife’s head.

“Not like anyone else but us know,” Jace replies, causing Izzy to roll her eyes.

“Not the point Jace,” She says, and presses a soft kiss to both Jace’s and Simon’s cheeks. “Goodnight you guys. See you guys tomorrow.”

“See you Iz, See you Lydia,” Simon says, and the girls walk off one way, and the boys walk in the opposite direction. Hands lacing together and he couldn’t wait for next month when they seal the deal, of marriage after six years of dating.


End file.
